Cengiz Çoban / Istanbul, May 11 () - An individual took a boy hostage at gunpoint on Istanbul’s busy Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge before he was dissuaded from the act and detained by police.

It took the police a full one and a half hours to persuade a man, who took a young boy hostage at gunpoint on busy Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge of Istanbul, one of the two bridges over the Bosphorus, at around 1pm on Monday afternoon.

The individual, whose name is not known yet, got to the scene on a commercial taxi before staging his act after climbing up to the metal railings of the bridge.

Measures were taken by the maritime police under the bridge as well as by medical teams on the bridge. The man was eventually convinced by a negotiation team, and detained. The incident caused traffic on the bridge while the negotiation took place.

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